D.C. might be the sort of place where people are into tawdry affairs, but it’s not much of a porn-viewing sort of a town.
Today Men’s Health published rankings on the 100 smuttiest cities in America, and D.C. comes in close to the bottom. (Pun, intended?) According to the rankings—which are based on DVD purchases, rentals and streaming; adult entertainment stores and Cinemax subscriptions—D.C. comes in 80th, only slightly lower on the list than New York (76) and Los Angeles (69) but ahead of puritanical redoubts such as Boston (83), Detroit (86) and Newark (89).
Orlando came in atop the list, followed by Las Vegas; Wilmington, DE; Raleigh, NC; Charlotte, NC; Minneapolis; Atlanta; Tampa; Anchorage, and Austin. The highest-ranked city in the region was Baltimore, at 20th.
Like many rankings of this sort, these are at best imperfect. According to the database of adult entertainment stores that Men’s Health relied on for part of its rankings, D.C. doesn’t have any—because it isn’t even listed alongside the 50 states. (To fairly measure this, you’d have to include adult stores in D.C. and within driving distance of the city.) And D.C. should at least get knocked up a few notches for the number of sex scandals involving seemingly chaste Republicans. Or for the nine D.C. employees that were fired in 2008 for viewing porn on their work computers at least 200 times a day. That’s pretty smutty, right?
Oh well. Those other cities can keep their DVDs and adult entertainment stores—we’ll always have our AshleyMadison.com subscriptions to keep us busy.
Martin Austermuhle